If Tim Minchin is right, only a ginger can call another ginger ginger. By the same token, perhaps only a ginger can effectively rebut the argument that so-called gingerism should be considered a form of discrimination, or even a hate-crime, equivalent to racism or homophobia. That case has been made often, most recently by Nelson Jones in the New Statesman, who in a blog post last week detailed a depressing litany of murders, assaults and suicides that have been linked to anti-redhaired prejudice.

Every one of those cases makes horrible reading – a heart-breaking tragedy for those involved, and a grim reminder of humanity's capacity for unprovoked cruelty and aggression. Violent and sadistic bullying of all sorts is abhorrent, regardless of a person's age or circumstances. When it is sparked by something as seemingly random and inescapable as hair-colour, body shape or imperfect facial features, it seems especially brutal and cruel. I also fully endorse Minchin's beautiful line: "Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words can break your heart".

Some have gone further, arguing that the UK's uniquely aggressive gingerism is indeed a form of racism, rooted in anti-Celtic, specifically anti-Irish, prejudice and therefore related to centuries-old matters of imperialism, religious bigotry and war. There may be some truth in that, but those roots are now buried as deep as the recessive genetic mutations in our MC1R proteins. Other forms of oppression are not only current, they are woven into the very fabric of our society.

I'm a proud ginger and I've been abused, insulted and even, as a child, assaulted and bullied for it. I wouldn't wish that on anyone, but I'm pretty sure I have never been denied a job or the lease on a flat because of my complexion. I haven't been stopped and searched by police 25 times within a year because I am ginger, or casually assumed to be a threat, a criminal or a terrorist. I am not confronted by political parties and movements, some with democratically elected representatives, which would like to see me deported from the country or granted second-class citizenship.

Likewise, no one has been putting up posters recently calling for me to be executed for gingerness. There are no respected religious leaders telling me that my very existence is sinful and that I'm heading for an eternity in hell. Nobody wishes to bar me from marrying my partner, wherever and however we choose, because she has (peculiarly, I will be the first to admit) fallen in love with a ginger.

For that matter, if we ever did get married, neither she nor I have grown up in a world where I could be raped with impunity as the effective property of the non-ginger party. Nobody would have ever denied me a mortgage under my own name, as happened during our parents' generation, or asked to talk to the non-ginger of the house about technical or mechanical matters. I haven't heard any politicians or newspaper headlines, this week or any other, assume that if one of us stays at home to look after the kids it will inevitably be the redhead.

Racism, sexism and homophobia are not just woven into the fabric of our history, they are living dynamics in our culture, even in our economy. They are, to greater or lesser extents, systematic and institutional in most aspects of life and the struggles to remove them are intrinsic to wider political battles over the very nature of our society, public policy and economic system. In that light, I would not hesitate to add disablism to the list of systematic oppressions.

After finally breaking free of the shackling language of "cripples" and "invalids" and securing the legal rights to access work and social participation, disabled people now face a twin-pronged, co-ordinated attack from politicians and press, who demonise them as scroungers and malingerers while snapping thread after thread of the safety net which keeps many out of abject poverty, squalor and indignity. That is institutional discrimination and oppression of the most shameful kind. To even suggest redhaired people face similar issues is insulting, verging on the obscene.

Anti-ginger prejudice and bullying is real and harmful, but the idea that it equates to these systems of oppression is fundamentally flawed. It assumes that all forms of prejudice and discrimination are equal and occurring in the same context when they really do not. It assumes that all forms of discrimination are the products of individual bigotry and irrational prejudice rather than structural and institutional divides.

The real danger in arguing that gingerism is just as harmful as racism, sexism, disablism or homophobia is that when you say those words, what some people will choose to hear is that racism, sexism, disablism or homophobia are just as superficial, just as trivial, just as much of a joke, as gingerism.